The Conference of the Birds

1

WHILE THE TREK FROM the farmstead in the woods to the start of Kumbricia’s Pass was short, comparatively speaking, every step he took bit at his bones and taxed his joints in a way that none of the long forays across country had seemed to do before.

Well, he was older. Hardlyold yet-twenty-three, was he, or twenty-four? Something like that. Not old enough to feel like an adult, really, but old enough to look like one, and to know the distinction between being carefree and careless.

So he took care. Any little scatter of stones might shift beneath his weight, any patch of grass might prove more slippery than it ought. He latched his eyes to the ground. Confidence and stamina returned all too slowly.

But return they did. Eventually he was walking two hours at a stretch before pausing to rest. He fixed his gaze to the horizon and willed himself forward by setting himself serial destinations. That tallest blue pine, that nubble of grasses in the upland meadow, that outcrop of granite. Before long, the prospect grew grander, as the Kells swam into clearer focus, and the steep cut between them saidKUMBRICIA ‘S PASS: enter if you dare.

He remembered his childhood journey with Oatsie Manglehand and the Grasstrail Train, and how the travelers had traded tales. Fierce Kumbricia, the witch from the oldest tales of Oz! Kumbricia was so ancient a figure of lore that she seemed freed from the limitations of any particular moral position. She was not exactly the demon crone from hell, intent on the destruction of mortal souls, nor was she the nodding grand-tit of the world, providing succor in times of trial. Or perhaps, more truly said, she was both. One plus one equals both. Like the most insouciant and playful of earthquakes, collapsing villages and crushing populations, Kumbricia’s actions followed her own secret intentions. To a human, what might look like luck one minute was disaster the next, but what meant luck to Kumbricia, or disaster either? In the stories she was fierce, amoral, wholly herself. Unvanquishable and incorrigible.

And unknowable, really.

Like the Unnamed God, when you came right down to it.

Occasionally, Nanny had singsonged, as a nursery ditty, something probably derived from the Oziad or some other baroque history-legend.

Kumbricia stirs the pot, and licks the ladle,

Sets the table, pours a glass of tears.

Waits beside the ominous vacant cradle.

Waiting still. She can wait for years.

Yes, just like the Unnamed God.

2

THE CLIFFS OPENED BEFORE him and then closed behind him, for the track into Kumbricia’s Pass took several quick turns along the valley floor before it began to rise. The ground breathed different vapors here, and the season was delayed: the browning leaves of the trees hadn’t fallen yet. Not enough wind could wend through to tear them away.

The brightness of the sky was shattered into glazed mosaic bits by the fretwork of branches and foliage. This high-slung canyon went on for days, didn’t it?-wasn’t that his recollection? Until it opened on the western slope of the Kells, and the Thousand Year Grasslands spread out as broad as the imaginary sea from children’s stories? How would he ever find traces of a convocation of Birds in this secret haven?

But a good place to gather, he had to concede. The mountains served as ramparts, and the ravine was helpfully overgrown. Here the Yunamata made their home most of the year. And here Elphaba and Liir had picked out their way all those ages ago, pressing on toward Kiamo Ko and the hope for sanctuary.

He had all the time for rumination he needed-and then some. What had he understood, then, of Elphaba’s drive? Her need? The force that pushed her around? Precious little. But he remembered the day she had saved the infant Snow Monkey, who would become Chistery. Her native-talent? power? skill at concentration?-or maybe, merely, compassion?-had caused a small lake to ice over so she half walked, half slid across it to collect the abandoned, fretting monkey baby.

That’s what his memory said. The very ice formed under her heels. The world conformed itself to suit her needs. But how could this possibly be true? Perhaps it was the unreliability of memory, the romanticking tendencies of childhood, that made Liir remember it this way. The lake went ice. The baby monkey was saved . Maybe, really, she’d waded. Or maybe the lake was already iced over.

Maybe all that really mattered, as to her power, was thatshe saved the baby monkey .

At the shores of a small tarn, he paused, and became aware of a new variety of silence. It was the sound of everything holding its breath.

At the farther side of the tarn was a small island. A spinney of knot-branch trees grew in the center of the island, their five or six tree trunks so close as to resemble the uprights of a series of doors, all leading to the same interior space among the trunks, some dozen feet in diameter. The trees held what was left of the Conference of the Birds, and the Birds were holding their breath.

He stood, not ready to call out, for he didn’t want them to scatter. But they were aware of him, he was sure. How many hundred pairs of eyes blinked or unblinked at him from those ring-coiled leaves? They neither approached him in sortie nor twittered in fright. Perhaps, he guessed, they were stupid with fear.

Finally he thrashed about along the bracken and located a fallen tree trunk substantial enough to bear his weight. He hauled it to the water’s edge and pushed it in. No conjuring up an ice-walk for him. With the help of a staff, he balanced himself and began to draw his way across the water. He could have swum, he knew, but that would require his undressing either before or after the swim, and it seemed an undignified way to approach a Convention.

The Birds seemed patient, and as he got closer he thought: It’s as if they have been waiting for me.

This was so, according to the hunch-hooded Cliff Eagle who bade him welcome.

“You’re the boy-broomist,” he said. “The fledgling. We knew you’d been downed. A Red Pfenix got far enough through enemy lines to cry out that much information before being wounded and having to turn back. We trusted you would come. You’ve come.”

The Cliff Eagle paused smartly, puffing out his breast feathers.

“I almost didn’t,” said Liir. “It wasn’t even my idea, really.”

The Eagle made a mouth gesture as close to a sneer as he could manage. “Humans are fickle. We know. But you’re here. The boy-broomist.”

“I’m without the broom.” Liir put his staff down on the ground so the Birds could see. “I walked. Have you a name, by the way?”

The other Birds hopped a branch or two closer to see if the Cliff Eagle would answer. They were the larger creatures, mostly-a few random Finches and Fitches, some Robins, and a busy preening department of Wrens-but mostly Eagles, Night Rocs, a youngish Pfenix in its glowing halo. Nine Swans still waiting for their Princess. A blind old Heron with a twisted left leg. Others.

“I know what happened to the Princess of the Swans,” said Liir, and told them how he had buried her-and, in a dim sense, come in her stead.

The Cliff Eagle took the news unflinchingly, though the Swans bowed their heads until their necks were white hoops, and their wings shuddered with an airy sound, as of an industrial baffle.

“I am the President of the Assembly,” said the Cliff Eagle. “Thank you for coming.”

Liir had no use for honorifics. “Am I to call you Mister President? Or just Birdy?”

The Cliff Eagle bristled, and then said, “General Kynot is my name, though my name isn’t important. And yours isn’t either. We’re soldiers at strategy, not a military tea.”

“Well, I’ve been a soldier and I’m not going back to it. I’m Liir, for what that’s worth, and I use my name. I’m not Broom-boy.”

Kynot ducked his head and bit at a nit under his wing. “Sorry, the place is crawling with nits,” he said. “Liir.” It was a concession, and Liir relaxed. He was about to ask permission to sit down, and then remembered he didn’t need it. So he sat, and the Birds came farther down from the branches, and most of them settled on the hardscuffle with the sound of small loaves of bread falling to a floor.

Kynot made quick work of their concerns. The Conference seemed to be comprised of seventy or eighty Birds who were now afraid to leave. They had met to convene about the threat in the skies, but that very threat had cornered them and grounded them. It would take a talent and a cunning greater than any of their skills to make the skies safe for travel.

“You’ve come to the wrong beak if you want talent or cunning,” said Liir.

“Don’t be absurd,” snapped Kynot, and continued.

He beat out every point of his argument with a hard flap of his wings. Whereas conditions of life under the Emperor had become intolerable, whereas his airborne army of dragons had systematically disrupted air travel, unsettled populations of Birds and birds, and interfered with the natural rights of flight and migration and convocation, now therefore a Congress of the Birds had been summoned, if sadly beleaguered by aforementioned hostile army, and such delegates as had managed to sneak in had concludedthereby that they were singly and in unity incapable of combating the enemy fleet. Therefore they needed help. Fast.

“I came to tell you of the death of the Princess of the Swans,” said Liir, “because it is what Elphaba would have done. Beyond that, I can’t be of much use. If I’m the only hope around, you’re in a heap of trouble.”

“Unlike Animals, we Birds haven’t often lived wing by jowl with humans,” replied the general. “The human prohibition against eating Animal flesh being subject to abuse, think how much less strict is any taboo against eating the Bird of the air. We must be shot at and brought down before we can be interviewed to learn if we are talking creatures. Few hungry farmers are willing to extend Birds that courtesy, so those of us who talk tend to congregate in areas less frequented by human scum. My apologies, that was crude of me.”

“Don’t apologize too fast, you don’t know me very well,” said Liir. “But still, why ask me for help?”

“You have flown, as most humans have not,” said Kynot simply. “You have powers unique among the humans we’ve met…”

“I can keep my balance. So what. It’s the broom that has powers. Elphaba’s broom.”

“The wing doesn’t work separately from the feather, Liir. They work in tandem.”

“Well, I haven’t the broom any longer, or haven’t you heard? So I can’t fly-which means this hardly concerns me.”

“You were attacked by the dragons yourself. Weren’t you? Or have I been fed misinformation?”

“Well, I was. But that’s between me and the dragons. It has nothing to do with you.”

“And they call us birdbrains.” Kynot was livid. “There is a common cause among our kind and a flying boy, you dodo.”

“I object,” said a Dodo, just waking up from a nap.

“Sorry, that was uncalled for. Listen. Liir. You must have been intending to help us, or why did you come here at all?”

He thought of Candle. “It was the suggestion of a third party.”

“A suggestion of what? That you deliver your tragic news, and then stay to laugh at us in our plight? That you see your fellow creatures chased, tortured, kept from associating freely, just as you were chased, robbed, and nearly killed, and then you-what? Walk home and retail the event for amusing dinnertime conversation?”

“Don’t paint me so bleakly. I’m capable of doing that for myself. Look, it’s occurring to me that I might ask something of you. On and off over the years, I’ve been looking for someone. A girl-child. Perhaps you could help. On your various migrations and such.”

“We can’t fly freely, or haven’t I put that clearly enough, you cretin?” Kynot was apoplectic. “How can we serve your private needs when our numbers are being diminished by the day?”

“Well, then.” Liir shrugged. “It’s a no-go. I guess I didn’t really understand much about this skirmish involving the Birds. It’s sad, but it hasn’t anything to do with me. And even if it did, I’m powerless…I’m not Elphaba.”

A small Wren hopped forward and said to Kynot, “If you please, begging your pardon, General…”

“Do not beg my pardon! Do notbeg at all! How many times have I to drill this lesson into your brain, Dosey?”

“Sorry, Gen’ral. Begging your pardon for that one, too. It’s just that the young man might want to think on this bit somewhat.” Dosey turned to Liir and cheeped. “It ain’t just us Birdys, mister. Those dragonfings are bad cess for human beings, too. Scraping the faces of defenseless women in the wilderness! Have they no shame? Have you? If you cain’t helpus out of the kindness of your liver, surely you could work to keep such things from happenin‘ to your own kind?”

“Well said, Dosey.” Kynot sounded less apologetic than surprised.

“Those were unionist missionaries, I’m told,” said Liir, his shoulders slumping. “It was horrible to hear about. But I’m not a maunt, and I don’t even know if I’m a unionist.”

“So what next? They’ll kill your brother in his stockings, and you’ll say, ‘He had grey eyes and I have green, so it weren’t really about me a’tall’?” asked the Wren. “They already attacked you, duckie, so’s I heard. Ain’t you rememberin‘?”

“Maybe I deserved to be attacked.”

“Oh, save us,” muttered Kynot. “Somebody save us. But it’s not going to be this nutter.”

Dosey wasn’t ready to give up. “Mebbe you did deserve it,” she snapped. “But that’s giving those dragons an awful lot of credit for knowing the insides and the sinsides of your soul! So what if they fly out of the stables of the Emperor! They’re not Talking Dragons! They’re in the pay of the Emperor of the Ugly! And you cain’t be sartain those young maunts deserved what they got, can you? Their faces so scraped! It’s hideous is what it is!”

“It’s not for me to decide whose faces get scraped or not…”

“No,” said Kynot. He reared up and looked as if he wanted to peck Liir’s eyes out. “No. Leave it in the beak of the Unnamed God, or his mortal avatar, the Emperor. Leave it to the agents of the Emperor, who run the Home Guard for the security of the Emerald City at the expense of all others who live in Oz. Or leave it to the underlings who follow the orders of their superiors. Leave it in the beaks of the dragons themselves. Dragons don’t kill people, people kill people. They kill themselves by walking unprotected in a world where there are dragons. You make me sick.”

“I don’t have any idea why the dragons attacked those maunts-”

“It is increasingly obvious that you don’t have any ideas at all. The dragons attacked the maunts to stir up trouble between the Yunamata and the Scrow. Those human populations had finally positioned themselves to be ripe for treaty making, after ten hundred generations…They had been learning to trust each other. With random attacks on isolated humans, the dragons could keep the tribes suspicious of each other. Tribes are easier to intimidate when they are not united. You said you were in the military: didn’t you learn anything about military strategy?”

Liir thought about the burning bridge. He could see again the letter of burning straw, changing shape as it fell, spelling something fiery and illegible into the vanquishing water.

He thought about Candle, waiting for him to return-having done something. Having completed some action. If Liir assumed he wanted Candle, and how could he know that yet?-he couldn’t have her. Not until he had an alternative against which to make a choice.

“Look,” he said. “Flattering, all this. But I can’t fly anymore. My broom is gone. I risked having my face scraped by coming solo across the Disappointments as far as Kumbricia’s Pass. I came for the wrong reasons-as usual. There’s nothing I can do for you, even if I am a human. I have no talent. My broom had great talent!-if it even was my broom. But it’s gone. Either the dragons took it, or it’s lost.

“Listen. Keep listening. Wipe that squawky look off your faces. Please. Why don’t you band together to fly out of here? A huge clot of you? The dragons couldn’t take you all out-some of you would be bound to get through.”

“Nice,” said a small Barn Owl. “Very nice. I have an irregular left wing and I tend to fly in loops, which slows me down. I’ll be one of the first to go. Gladly shall I sacrifice myself for the great Conference of Birds!” He didn’t sound as if he meant it.

“While there are grubs to eat here in Kumbricia’s Pass, and the dragons can’t see into our hideout, we are imprisoned here,” said Kynot. “But to leave would be to risk even one of us-and that is a risk we don’t take. We won’t. The least little Sparrow that falls diminishes us all. I thought you knew all about that.”

“Yeah, well, my religious instruction was pretty feeble.”

“I wasn’t speaking metaphorically, but of military strategy. You could get to the dragons, couldn’t you? A witch-boy passing as a soldier? You could see if they had your broom, for one. You could get it back. You could be our voice-our ambassador. Our human representative, our agent, our proxy-”

Liir interrupted. “If I could get my broom-what good could I do? They would just attack me again. Last time they were satisfied with my broom and my cape. Maybe this time they’d scrape my face.”

“You just said it’s not up to you to decide whose face gets scraped or not,” said the Cliff Eagle. “If you believe that, put your face out there and deal with what happens.”

“This isn’t going to work,” said Liir. “I can’t do anything for you. I’m not a Bird. I’m not a witch-boy. I don’t even have a broom anymore. And even if I had it, maybe I wasn’t meant to fly. Maybe I shouldn’t even have that liberty.”

“Maybe none of us should have the liberties we have. We keep going as we are, we’ll find out soon enough. But if you help us squelch the dragon threat, we’ll do what you ask. We’ll hunt for that human female you’re seeking.”

The Wren hopped forward again. “You’re going to do it,” she said to Liir. “You’re going to try, ain’t you. I kin tell.”

“You read the future, Dosey?” said Liir.

“Begging your pardon, sir-”

“Dosey!” interrupted Kynot. “No begging!”

“Ooh, sorry I’m sure,” Dosey continued. “No, Mister Broom-boy. You’re going to do it for a perfectly selfish reason-our looking for your lost girl-fing-and that’s okay. Why not? Long as the job gets done.”

The Birds were silent.

“You’ve had a taste of it,” she said in a softer voice. “Not many has, but you has. You’ve tried flying, ain’t you. Now try giving it up.”

She came nearer. “Try giving it up,” she said. “Begging your pardon, sir, you cain’t.”

The Birds began to flap their wings and, one by one, to lift up, making their final argument. They swept counterclockwise around the dead little lake, perhaps in deference to the Owl whose wing anomaly made him list in a particular direction. There were more Birds than Liir had first perceived. Several hundred. The more timid ones must have been hiding higher in the branches, but listening intently: all listening. Now they flew, and as they flew, there could be no leader, no follower: they traced the same track in the air, faster and faster. The very force of their rhythmic pumping made the surface of the lake stand up in waves of its own, higher and higher, till wingtips of white froth were beaten up, and then the clots of pale spume lifted and circled beneath the vortex of birds like a second population, like ghost Birds, like the relatives of the Conference who had been slain. But what were ghosts without voices?

The birds were silent-none of them, even the Geese and Ducks, who liked to honk in flight, dared risk attracting attention to their stronghold.

“Stop,” cried Liir and held up his hands-not out of pity, nor fear, nor a new moral conviction: simply out of the lack of any further reason to resist.

The blind, gimpy Heron hobbled forward and pecked at Liir’s leg to locate him. “I can’t fly either, now my sight’s gone,” the Heron said. “Makes me no less a Bird, though, do it?”